Maja Funke - Dead Glitch

»Dead Glitch« is a research project and a multimedia body of work that was initiated in the forefront of the global event of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris. In addition to the economic and social damage that this megalomania will have or has already caused in the French capital, the project places the issue of comprehensive algorithmic video surveillance at the center of attention.

Urban design is updated in the Parisian gaze. What seems to be a streetlamp is no longer a distributor for romantic light, but a surveillance instance in empire green or anthracite. Some five-eyed sentries are special in their materialization of control and freedom and – other than white-bodies cuboids – may not seem dissuasive but rather belonging. A security enforcement with symbolic aesthetic, in the heritage of the penetrability of the urban space in Louis’ XIV »Ville Lumière«.

Variations de lampadaires, Paris 2024 (L’infrastructure s’appuie sur l’infrastructure).

From July 26 to September 8, 2024, the Olympic and Paralympic Games took place in Paris and other parts of France. In preparation, the French government passed an exceptional law on March 19, 2023 that includes provisions to improve security, situational (crime) prevention and counterterrorist measures (Article 9 to 19). Among them is the »experimental [sic!]« use of algorithmic video surveillance to control crowds at sporting, leisure and cultural events. The trial will run until the end of March 2025 – 6 months after the end of the Olympics, which prompted the increased security needs.

Algorithmic Video Surveillance (AVS) consists of the installation and use of software that executes the analysis of videos to detect, identify or classify certain behaviors, situations, objects and people. The various machine-learning-based applications are mainly used by the police in conjunction with surveillance cameras: either for real-time detection of certain suspicious or risky ‘events’ or retrospectively as part of police investigations. Biometric identification allows a person to be recognized in a sample of people on the basis of physical, physiological or behavioral patterns.

While walking Paris in dérive, one might sense the onset of normalization of the New Military Urbanism. Counter observation reveals the banalization of a watching city. Anonymity and privacy are vital for freedom like demonstration, movement and expression. Yet, as states adopt surveillance and control systems designed for warfare – driven by security concerns, economic interests, and political goals – privacy violations become the norm. These measures, initially temporary, often become permanent after the state of emergency, treating all citizens as suspects and placing AVS in fundamental conflict with democratic values.

Surveillance video by SNCF, masking in original, cropped and sped up. (gif)

The title »Dead Glitch« alludes not least to the deadly potential for error entailed by trust in these technologies. »Warfare, like everything else, is being urbanized« and the boomerang of dataveillance is returning to state borders and war zones:

In the EU, migration is treated as a security issue, with the EU Commission intensively researching automated technologies to 'defend' the Mediterranean, one of the world's deadliest border regions, using dehumanized AI-supported methods. In the Gaza Strip, systems like Lavender target individuals for killing by disclosing their identities and locations. Concurrently, Russia and China are advancing automated weapon systems, prompting the US and EU to develop similar technologies through NATO. This digitalization of warfare is transforming the role of citizens under the Geneva Conventions.

Even with a human in the loop, responsibility and jurisdiction are increasingly shifting from humans to machines. The mediated image in the security apparatus, among other tools, is meant to control bodies. With acknowledging surveillance images as actants we must emphasize that their imaginary sphere of phantasms, superstructures, and ulterior worlds exerts a tangible, worldmaking effect on the real and human lifes.

When video surveillance is not a material apparatus, but a practice, there is place to argue for a proximity to social justice and bringing back in mind that historically, antifascist countermovements emerge in response to a tightening of state security.

(Part of a comment by Ruben)